Free When She Flew by Jennie Shortridge Page A

shook his head, said they probably wouldn’t stop until they found us.
    The last thing I heard him say before I fell asleep was, “Get some rest. We’ll walk out after dark.”

9
    A t nearly 20:00 hours, the light turned a duller shade of green; the air cooled to lukewarm. Jess, Jenkins, and Takei walked along the creek now, shoes muddy and pants soaked from the knees down, while the others climbed the ridge above them.
    “We’ve only got an hour of light left,” Jenkins said, stopping and removing his cap. His short, wiry hair glistened with sweat against his scalp. “We still have to find our way out of here. Looks like we’ll be doing that in the dark.” He ran his hand over his head, wiped his face with his forearm and pulled his cap back on.
    It didn’t matter to Jess; they weren’t going to stop. How could you ever stop, knowing a kid might be in trouble?
    They came upon a swampy spot that looked like it might connect to another stream. “Let’s try this way,” Jess said, and the two men followed her, even though it led them farther away from the others. They followed the soupy depression until it became an actual creek, though a tiny one, only three to four inches at its widest spots. Jess knew her choice was popular, though, as the stream was surrounded by good flat earth to walk along, with foliage so beautiful she wanted to tiptoe through the ferns and leafy plants that nature tended so meticulously. Was it bad karma to step on them? Would she come back as a plant in her next life and be trodden upon by some boot-clomping hiker? Jess shook her head. She was getting punchy. The sense she’d had earlier, that they were traveling through some other world, some other time and place, shimmered in the periphery.
    They tracked the creek for a few hundred yards, their footfalls remarkably loud in the still of the forest.
    Jenkins slipped and fell to one knee in the creek, cursing, then laughing. “Damn. We’re never going to sneak up on anyone like this.”
    “Whoa,” Takei said. Jess felt her heart lurch as she saw what he was looking at: a slice of blue farther ahead.
    “Oh, my god,” she said. Not only blue but man-made blue, like a tarp, or a tent, a startling sight after so many hours of green upon green. They reached for their firearms and rifles. Takei held the AR-15 at his side, staying in the lead.
    “How far away are the others?” Jess asked in a low voice, but no one replied. They hadn’t heard them since they turned up the smaller creek. Jess reached for the radio on her shoulder. “Villareal to Everett. Come in.”
    It occurred to her that this must be what it felt like to be a foot soldier in a war, trudging through a foreign land, wondering at every turn whether someone was hiding in the underbrush—someone more familiar with the territory than you and not wanting you there, fingers on their own triggers.
    They proceeded toward the object, scanning the surrounding woods with each step. The earth around them suddenly became hard-packed and clear of growth—smooth to the point of seeming swept of loose dirt. Jess wondered if the others could hear the blood slamming through her veins, if they felt as frightened as she did. The clearing widened, and indeed a blue tarp covered a large woodpile. Fir boughs had been laid across the top to camouflage it, but the tarp had slipped a stubborn few inches below.
    They stopped. All around them were signs of human habitation. Jess tightened her grip on the shotgun. To their left, the tiny stream had been diverted by a short wall of rocks into two pools: one shallow, one deeper.
    “Look,” Jess said. The shallow pool held a plastic gallon container of milk, plastic bags of carrots and apples. A tub of the same canola oil margarine she used. She tried to swallow and couldn’t.
    Jenkins called out, “Police! Everyone out here in front of us, now, hands in the air!” They waited, then proceeded uphill on the hard-packed ground, passing a raised